Vlastimil Hort was born in Kladno, Czechoslovakia. He became an IM in 1962 and a GM in 1965 and went on to win the Czechoslovak Championship six times. In 1977, he qualified for the Candidates but lost the Spassky - Hort Candidates Quarterfinal (1977). He is known for introducing the 'Hort system' of awarding prizes. He now lives in Germany and is still an active tournament player.

waustad: Congratulations on winning the Chess Train Tournament. One of these years I'll have to play in that and combine it with some time in Austria to visit my old haunts and see more of the country than I visited years ago.
http://www.chessvibes.com/third-che...

His latest competitive chess was just played a few days ago at Basel (Switzerland), Schachfestival Neujahrsopen 2014, won by Radoslaw Wojtaszek.

But Vlastimil Hort played, according to the tournaments homepage, <<http://www.schachfestivalbasel.ch/>>, the most moves of all (more than hundred) players, and finished honorably with 5 out of 7 points in a pretty strong field.

Hort was a top-ten player in the mid-1970s, and a regular top twenty-player from mid-60s to mid-80s. As already pointed out by <Gypsy> earlier, Hort played on board 4 for the "Rest of the World" against "USSR", beating individually his opponent Polugaevsky with 2.5 to 1.5. in this famous match in 1970 at Belgrade. Hort was also a Candidate, 1977 in the quarter-final against Boris Spasski, a match lost in extremis. On the english wikipedia site there are some interesting details. Hort is characterized as a truly fair sportsman: <<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlasti...>>

In honour of his jubilee, chessbase made an interview with Vlastimil: <<http://de.chessbase.com/post/vlasti...>>. Hort talks about how he was learning chess in a hospital, his czech childhood years, his first appearence at the Olympiads aged sweet sixteen in 1960 at Leipzig, his fellow compatriots Karel Opocensky, Pachman, Kavalek, Jansa, Smejkal and others; whom he regards as greatest player ever (Bobby Fischer, not Kasparov) and preferred piece (it's the horse, l'avant-garde), his love for ice-hockey, his emigration, and of course, he speaks about some famous wins and losses throughout his immense career.

WannaBe: I believe that Chess possesses a magic that is also a help in advanced age. A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of chess and other events can seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard. - Vlastmil Hort

TheFocus: <I believe that chess possesses a magic that is also a help in old advanced age. A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of chess and other events can seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard> - Vlastimil Hort.

Troller: Hort prizing system is a way of evening out the prize structure in case of tied standings. Basically, everyone gets 50% of the prize according to their Sonnenborg-Berger standings, then the remaining 50% are split between all players sharing the same amount of points.

So, if 3 players are tied for first in a tournament with these prizes:

1 100$
2 60$
3 40$

Then players are ranked according to SB and will receive 50% of the prize for respective SB-placing and the remaining 100$ will go into a pot that is split threeways among the 3 players. So payout will be 83$, 63$ and 53$ (the final dollar in such a situation goes to Herr Hort).

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